I'm having a giveaway contest! You can enter several different ways! Leave a comment here, or on my Facebook fan page. I would like to see my fan page grow a little bit, so if you recommend my fan page to a friend and they join my fan page and leave a comment mentioning you, you will receive two entries. :o) Leave a comment of your own and that will make it three entries! More chances of winning! Become a new fan yourself, and leave a comment and you'll also get two entries!

What's the prize? This cute little snowman sitting on my desk this morning. I know it, he knows it - everybody is sick of winter and snow! But he's hoping to find a loving home all the same!

I'll be taking entries from now until midnight central US time Sunday, and I will announce the winner next Monday morning. That's March 22. :o)

Here's a link to my Facebook fan page:

Designs by Ginny Baker

And here's the little snowman you could win:

COOKIE CUTTER ORNAMENTS

Since people are always looking for quick and easy ornaments to make, editors are always looking for quick and easy ornament projects. I came up with an idea to use a 2" gingerbread man cookie cutter I had to make a variety of Christmas characters that I could put onto glass ball ornaments. This was a project I did for the January 2001 issue of "Great American Crafts" magazine:



The snowman was made using the 2" cookie cutter, the gingerbread boy and girl were made using a 1" gingerbread man cutter.

The Santa Claus below uses the same 2" gingerbread man cut-out as a base, only this time, I cut the piece out of red clay, and then added the other elements to turn it into a Santa.



I attached the unbaked pieces to the glass balls using super glue and then baked them. They've held up for 9 years with no problems, but if you don't want to put super glue in the oven, you could always attach the unbaked clay pieces to the glass ball, bake them, then gently pop them off, and reattach them with glue. I've never had any problems with baking super glue. It is flammable, but not at the low temps polymer clay bakes at. I was not the first person who tried this! LOL I took my cue from many other clay artists who have baked super glue with polymer clay.

This makes a cute and very simple project that could easily be personalized.

CREATING A POLYMER CLAY SNOWMAN VIDEO

Well my video editing skills definitely need work, but considering it's my first attempt at editing together a series of clips, it's not too bad. I just wish it were as clear as it was before I uploaded it to YouTube. Anyway, I hope you will enjoy checking it out. Listening to that music, while I was working on the video, brought back so many great memories. My brothers and I grew up listening to those Christmas classics, which my parents would play every Christmas season. Both of my parents are gone now, so those memories, while wonderful, were also bittersweet. That music also helped put me in the mood to create more holiday themed items.

Here's a link to the video:

Creating a Polymer Clay Snowman

WHIMSICAL CHARACTERS

Before I started doing primarily dog items, I used to sell whimsical characters at shows and on ebay for many years. In fact, it was those whimsical characters that led to me being asked by well known craft book publisher, Design Originals, to create a how-to book on creating clay Christmas ornaments, and to publishing numerous how-to projects in other collaborative books, and magazines.

I always enjoyed creating charming seasonal characters, especially snowmen. So I recently taped a video of myself creating an adorable little snowman. I was all set to edit it with Windows Movie Maker, and found out to my dismay, that the format my camera saves video files in is not supported by WMM! So now I'm in the process of upgrading my QuickTime software to QuickTime Pro, and hope I will be able to post this cute little video on YouTube and here, sometime in the next couple of days.

These little characters are currently listed on ebay, along with a few others. You can access my ebay seller page by clicking on the ebay widget on the right side of the page.

It was always so funny to me to be creating snowmen in Vegas when it was 70+ degrees outside! Last winter, our last in Vegas, we actually experienced a record snowfall on Dec. 17th. It was the first time the school district closed school because of snow in 30 years!! I'm so glad we were there for that, after living in Vegas for 17 1/2 years. It was such a fun day! It put everybody in such a festive mood, just before Christmas. :o)

Soon enough I won't be lacking for real life inspiration when the first snowfall hits my new MO hometown. So I'm enjoying creating these little snow guys and some seasonal dog items this week.

I hope to be able to share my little snowman video by Tues. or Wed. of this week.